I will be attending the Y-Tuesday poetry reading event on Tuesday 7 June, at 7:45 pm where I will be reading some of my poetry. If you are in the vicinity please do pop in to hear me and other poets reading our work. For details of Y-Tuesday events please visit (https://www.facebook.com/ytuesday.poetry).
Kevin
I saw Utopia like some bright star.
It burned far
Away and the nearer
I drew the clearer
It shonne on bones white
That glistened in it’s baileful light.
I saw man, his head in a book,
He dained not to look
At the earth but dwelt
In a world of ideas and felt
That if only man would conform to his abstract theory
This planet dreary
Would become a paradise, where man would reach for the sky.
As time passed he wondered why
The star
Was just as far
Away
As the day
On which he first read Marx or some other sage.
The theorists’s rage
He did mark
With tombstones stark
Which the idealist built
Employing the spilt
Tears of men
Who when
He spoke of Utopia shook their heads
With dread.
One Utopia has fled
Yet the blood that bled
Will blead
Again
If terror’s reign
Remains unconstrained
By the knowledge of past pain.
My thoughts travel back
Down history’s track.
I hear the clack
Of the wheels of the train
Running through my nostalgic brain.
I recollect separate carriages, each with an individual door,
And me reading,
My imagination feeding
On the contents of a magazine,
Today, no longer seen.
Who could ask for more?
Often I sat alone.
There was No mobile phone
To disturb my contemplation.
The nation
Has moved on.
And the old characterful trains have gone.
I have to accept
That which I would reject,
A perfect world of plastic and chrome
Where man sits alone
Conversing with his friend, the phone.
—
I remember travelling on trains with separate carriages, each compartment having comfortable seats and holding (if memory serves correctly) a maximum of 6 people. The
My dog yelps in his sleep.
Can a canine weep?
And what thoughts of joy or pain
Pass through his sleeping brain?
In an exstasy of sound and smell
You dwell.
The freshly roasted chicken, just out of reach is sheer hell
To my friend
Who’s end
Is food and play.
Your day
Will not be so long as mine,
Yet we humans whine
While you in the moment live
And give such love
To your god above
Who sits envying you your state of grace.
Would that I could change place
With you
My friend true.
He feared he would drown
In his words profound.
But the water barely wet his toes.
One day the poet knows
The river will run dry
And try
Though he will,
His muse shall be, forever still
“The Blackbird on the wing, so sweetly sings
And brings
Joy to we two
Who
Through
These wild flowers
Walk and talk,
Whiling away many an hour”.
But she put no store
In my words
Nor in the singing of the birds,
Which went unheard,
For the ring
She wore
Was connected to the Internet of Things.
The pious wag their fingers
While love’s perfume
Lingers
In a darkened room,
Where mere mortals enjoy
That which the saint would destroy.
A man all his efforts bent
To the exclusion of all else,
On the construction of a tower called self.
The higher it went
The less content
He grew.
Breaking through
the clouds
And feeling proud
He saw
A boy soar,
Then fall, seaward bound.
Icarus was the boy’s name
And from his fall nothing profound
Came
For man continues his building just the same.
Sometimes the air is so pure
And beauty’s store
Becomes too much.
At such
Moments the heart is full
And a dull
Ache
Will not me forsake.
Tears fall on the tranquil lake.
The sun awakes.
I will go
And see the rainbow
Shine
And ponder on what some call nature
And others the divine.
How easy to construe
The new and inviting
For what is true.
The ride exciting
Will
Thrill
For a while.
The denial
That a thing has become banal
Shall
Not prevent it from being so.
The rider halfheartedly says “woe”
But the horse
Will continue on it’s familiar course.
“I will turn back”the horsemen doth say
“Yet how easy it is to stay
On the well trodden way.
The day
Grows dark
And the lark
Has long since ceased to sing.
The weary fairies in their ring
To me call.
Oh, how easy ‘Tis to fall …”.
K Morris - Poet 